Monday, January 07, 2008

Herringbone Handwarmers

The little garageside office I'm currently blogging from is freezing most of the time. I needed something to keep my hands toasty, but not obstruct finger movement, so I converted Elliphantom's cute herringbone mitts pattern into simple handwarmers.

Pattern: Herringbone mitts by elliphantom, available free on her blogYarn: 2 skeins of Koigu, in lilac and brown (lost the tags). I used a bit more than half a skein of the brown, and a third of a skein lilac.Needles: US 1 dpn'sMods: I converted the pattern from mittens to fingerless gloves, and cast on 66 sts to make up for the smaller gauge (I added 16 sts to the pattern, which is two of the herringbone repeats).

My crafty goals for the new year are to get better at sewing. I'm pretty happy with the accessories I've made this year, but garments still make me freeze up with fear. The problem is that I have high expectations of craftsmanship, and my enthusiasm starts to crumble as soon as the pieces don't quite match up. So, first, I'm gonna lighten up, because I'm not planning to become a dressmaker at the house of Chanel, and second, I'm gonna learn as much as I can and start off with a (hopefully) easy project. Also, I'd like to use up all the odd balls of yarn I have. Some are leftovers from projects, others just single skeins to 'try out' the yarn, so there will be more hoppelpoppel projects. Once I've got 50% used up, I'll get to reward myself with yarn for a planned project. That should be motivation enough ;-)

30 comments:

These are lovely and elegant - I love those colors together. Have fun with sewing garments in '08 - and go easy on yourself. I've been sewing for a long time, and I've learned that there's a lot of room for fudging the results with sewing. So if your pieces don't match up exactly - who cares! Odds are you won't see it in the finished product. Sewing clothes is so wonderfully rewarding - and you can always adjust/change/redo things if you're not happy with the results.

I think that might be my goal, too, sewing. My mom got me a sewing machine for Christmas that I have yet to learn how to use. I can seam knitted garments, but can't sew. Hopefully I'll learn how to use it at some point this year!

Your gloves are quite nice! I hope the weather warms up a little for you in your office!!!

Since last month I've been thinking a lot about your (our?) personal expectations for your (our?) projects. As much as you feel that you need to lighten up, I feel that I could benefit from some of your perfectionist tendencies. It would be great if we could just donate some to each other hunh?

These are lovely handwarmers. Best wishes on your sewing goals and I'm so looking forward to your hoppelpoppel projects. I'm sure they're going to be inspiring, I still have your hoppelpoppel socks in mind for my leftovers.